Unraveling biotic interactions determining soil microbial community assembly and functioning

National audience; Microbial communities are at the heart of all ecosystems and yet, a sound understanding of the ecological processes governing the assembly of these communities in the environment is missing. To address the role of biotic interactions in assembly and functioning of the soil microbiota, we used a top down manipulation approach based on the removal of various populations in a natural microbial community. Suspensions of the soil microbiota were subjected to various biocidal and filtration treatments before being inoculated into the same sterilized soil. We hypothesized that if biotic interactions are an important shaping force of the microbiota assembly, removal of microbial …